Accused testifies in Hyatt trial

This file photo shows an RCMP member taking down police tape the day after the deadly party in Peachland.

The teen accused of stabbing to death Ashlee Hyatt testified Tuesday that the knife allegedly used in the incident was brought to the fight by another girl.

The emotional testimony was given during the ongoing trial for the young woman facing a second degree murder charge in the death of Hyatt at a Peachland house party on June 2, 2010.

Early in the testimony, the girl explained she was a newcomer to Mount Boucherie Secondary School, who found it difficult to meet people right away.

By the spring of 2010, the athletic teen, who played soccer, was hanging out with a crowd who liked to party.

She met Hyatt at one of the gatherings, and they got along pretty good, because they had a lot in common, she said.

As she spent more time with the group, her grades started going down a little bit, but she continued to play soccer and go dirt biking when she could.

The day the incident took place was not a normal drinking day for the teens. Typically, they would drink lighter alcohol, but on June 2, they started drinking shots of whiskey while four wheel driving after school.

When they arrived at the Peachland party, the accused left her purse and the grey boots she wore that night at the entryway of the house and went up the stairs to the living room.

They put on some music and were having fun talking, laughing and dancing.

The happy mood changed when a boy she was sitting next to in the living room started getting flirtatious, putting his hand on her leg and moving closer to her.

She denied that a kiss was shared between the two.

When she walked back out on the deck, she said, girls, including Hyatt, were in a huddle talking about the kiss.

"They were looking at me. I could hear my name being said," she said.

It wasn't long before they were bickering and yelling at her, with Hyatt calling her a slut and a whore, saying she was in a relationship with someone else and it wasn't right.

The tension at the party escalated as the boy she supposedly kissed and the boy she was dating began pushing each other.

Soon after a friend of the family who lived in the house arrived on the scene and asked everyone to leave. The accused's boyfriend pulled out brass knuckles, but was told to put them away.

At this point the accused said she was crying, annoyed and sick of everyone yelling at her and calling her a slut. She ran after the boys who had been asked to leave. Out on the street, a teen who lived in the Peachland house pulled her back and she fell headfirst into garbage cans.

She tried to talk to the woman who broke up the party, but to no avail.

As she tried to talk to her boyfriend in the street, Hyatt put herself between the two of them while the girl holding the party was off to the right side.

Photo: Trevor Rockliffe

File photo shows police packing up evidence the day after Ashlee Hyatt was killed.

At that point she pushed them and they pushed back.

The fight quickly escalated to the point where the girls were punching, scratching and pulling each other's hair.

"I felt like I had been ganged up on," she said. "I was defending myself. It got really rough."

As the 'ball of fighting', as she described it, continued, she recalled looking over and seeing Hyatt on the ground, and then the knife in the party host's hand.

"I was moving it and saying get the f.... away. I felt really scared and didn't know why Ashlee was down," she said.

By this point, most of the people at the party were in the street screaming and yelling. There was s....everywhere, she said, purses, everything, scattered on the road.

As people yelled get the h... out of there to her, she grabbed her purse and took off, without her boots.

She ended up at a friend's house before going home and learning more about what happened. She called the police and was taken into custody.

During cross examination by crown counsel Murray Kaay, he suggested that the amount of alcohol she drank could have impacted her memory of what took place that night.

Kaay further said it was the accused who took the knife out of her purse and swung it causing the injuries to Hyatt and that she was deliberately vague in her explanation of what happened, when she showed up at a friend's house after the incident.